People are talking....

Thursday, July 22, 2004

My friends from Walden sent the following release about their upcoming PBS doc.

Walden Media, WGBH Present Lewis/Freud Series "The Question Of God"

Special Program To Air On September 15 & 22nd On PBS

The Question of God, a four-hour series on PBS, explores in accessible and
dramatic style issues that preoccupy all thinking people today: What is
happiness? How do we find meaning and purpose in our lives? How do we
reconcile conflicting claims of love and sexuality? How do we cope with the
problem of suffering and the inevitability of death? Based on a popular
Harvard course taught by Dr. Armand Nicholi, author of The Question of God,
the series illustrates the lives and insights of Sigmund Freud, a life-long
critic of religious belief, and C.S. Lewis, a celebrated Oxford don,
literary critic, and perhaps this century's most influential and popular
proponent of faith based on reason.

"It may be that Freud and Lewis represent conflicting parts of ourselves,"
Dr. Nicholi notes. "Part of us yearns for a relationship with the source of
all joy, hope and happiness, as described by Lewis, and yet, there is
another part that raises its fist in defiance and says with Freud, 'I will
not surrender.' Whatever part we choose to express will determine our
purpose, our identity, and our whole philosophy of life."

Through dramatic storytelling and compelling visual re-creations, as well
as interviews with biographers and historians, and lively discussion, Freud
and Lewis are brought together in a great debate. "The series presents a
unique dialogue between Freud, the atheist, and Lewis, the believer," says
Catherine Tatge, director of The Question of God. "Through it we come to
understand two very different ideas of human existence, and where each of
us, as individuals, falls as believers and unbelievers."

The important moments and emotional turning points in the lives of Freud
and Lewis - which gave rise to such starkly different ideas - fuel an
intelligent and moving contemporary examination of the ultimate question of
human existence: Does God really exist?

The Question of God is produced by Tatge/Lasseur Productions in association
with WGBH and Walden Media.

For more information or to schedule an interview with Dr. Nicholi please
contact: Erin Mackey at: Emackey@walden.com

PROGRAM OVERVIEW

All over the world, people are asking the same questions: Why is there so
much pain and suffering in the world? What does it mean to be happy? Is
there such a thing as evil? Does God really exist? This September, through
the brilliant minds and personal struggles of two of the most influential
thinkers of the twentieth century, PBS presents an emotional and
intellectual journey into the meaning of life.

About Part One
The Question of God Part I presents the early stories of C.S. Lewis and
Sigmund Freud, two men with very different ideas of human existence. In
childhood, each embraced the religion of his family. But the early death of
Lewis's mother, and the horrors he witnessed in the First World War tested
his faith. In middle age, Lewis found his once-passionate atheism
troubling, and began searching for faith again. Freud, studying medicine in
the age of Darwin, found he had no use for a creator. As he developed his
theory of psychoanalysis, he came to see belief in God as just another
human fantasy.

To grapple with the questions raised by the lives and ideas of Freud and
Lewis, Dr. Armand Nicholi leads a panel of seven thoughtful men and women
in a wide-ranging discussion of some of the fundamental questions. What
influences us to embrace or reject religious belief? Is the scientific
method, as Freud wrote, the only path to the truth? Does the human longing
for God, as Lewis wrote, actually prove that God exists? Do miracles
actually happen?

About Part Two
As Freud and Lewis entered middle age, their divergent beliefs about the
existence of God were fixed. But tragedy would test each man's convictions.
For Freud, it was the terror of the Third Reich and the death of a beloved
daughter. For Lewis, in his fifties, the brief happiness of new romance was
turned to ashes with the untimely death of his wife, igniting the greatest
spiritual crisis of his life. Yet in the end, each man confronted his own
death with his beliefs intact.

Dr. Armand Nicholi and his panel continue their debate, exploring the
implications of choosing a spiritual or secular worldview for the primary
questions of life - of love, morality, suffering and death: From where do
we get our concept of right and wrong - from the Creator or from human
experience? How do we square the existence of an omnipotent, all-loving God
with all of the evidence of evil and suffering in the world? How do these
starkly different worldviews help us resolve the riddle of death?

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